NOVEL NEXT Sabbatical – Chapter 201: The Council of Bickering Mortals
Aperio let her gaze sweep over those that had gathered in the foyer of the rather large building. Most of them had some magical ability, even if it wasn't much. At least the room looks nice.
While the All-Mother was fairly certain that magic had had nothing to do with the construction of the building, she could not help but question it. Aside from what essentially amounted to a giant hole running from the middle of the first floor all the way to the roof of the building, she could not spot any other form of structural support in the marble-tiled hall making up almost the entirety of the first floor.
She waited until Caethya and the mortals that accompanied them had also stepped inside before she began to make her way towards the reception desk. It was staffed by a variety of regular humans, none of whom looked happy to be there. That seemed to be especially true for the man the All-Mother was currently nearing as he heaved a sigh upon noticing her approach.
"It would seem we are expected," Aperio said, trying to keep the mana that laced her voice to a minimum while also erecting a small barrier that would keep their conversation quiet. Just like many others she had already seen today, the people manning the reception also had a picture of her on their devices, though the displays also had what she could only describe as a written profile of her character. One that was mostly empty. "I guess our blood-loving friend informed his kin."
"I talked to no-one since we met," Ethan hissed through clenched teeth. "The council boot-lickers are not my friends."
"I was not talking about you," Aperio said as she continued, uninterrupted, to the desk that was her goal. "I did say that we know another one."
"May I ask something?" Eleanor asked, rendering the point of her question moot.
"You may," the All-Mother replied regardless, stopping as a group of children that quite obviously were not paying attention to where they were going rushed past in front of her.
"Who is your friend outside?" the mortal mage asked. "I like to think that I am well connected, but I have never seen him before."
"Probably because he is not from here," Caethya replied. "Originally he lived on the other side of this country. Plus, he has spent the last little while with us. We can remain quite hidden, if we do not wish to be found."
Eleanor glanced towards Aperio, who had just shifted her wings slightly to avoid the grasping reach of one of the children. The little boy was undeterred, and would have tried again if not for a woman who came to quickly usher the child away.
"Somehow,” Eleanor said, “I don't really believe that she is good at hiding herself."
"I dislike it," Aperio replied. "But that does not mean I could not. If I really wanted to, nobody would be able to find me." Some quiet time in my Void doesn't sound so bad.
The thought of Caethya and herself in the comforting nothing was as pleasant as ever, but also not feasible at the moment. She looked upwards, her aura effortlessly moving past the feeble barrier they had put up around the room in which she presumed the council had begun to gather. Some are already in their seats, arguing. The All-Mother suppressed a huff. Mortals.
"Greetings," Aperio said, extending the barrier that kept her speech private while also lowering herself slightly so she could look more directly at the receptionist. "I would introduce myself, but it would seem we are already expected." She offered the mortal a smile before drawing back and taking a step towards the small archway that separated the elevators from the otherwise open plan of the first floor. "We would not want our hosts to wait, right?"
The mortal opened his mouth slightly before he sucked in a breath and motioned for them to go past. Aperio was certain he had been instructed to stop them but had thought better of it. He was not wrong, of course; she would not have waited unless a very good reason was provided. Still, he could have made the attempt.
Eleanor hesitated, looking between the receptionist and Aperio while Ethan, already uncaring for the rules of the council, stepped away from the hesitating Human man to head towards the All-Mother and Caethya.
"Are you going to join us?" Aperio asked, turning slightly to look at the mortal mage. "If you do not wish to, you are free to stay with Adam or leave."
The woman hesitated for a moment longer before she took a breath, squared her shoulders and stepped past the reception desk.
Aperio could not help but raise a brow at the quickened beat of her heart and the rather rapid breaths she was taking. She extended a small tendril of mana towards the mortal, invisible to all but perhaps Caethya, letting some of her magic flow with deliberate slowness into the mortal. Having the mage succumb to some form of panic attack was not something she wanted to happen.
"Let us see if these work like the ones I remember," Aperio mumbled in the language of her people as she touched a button with a downward pointing arrow on it.
A quiet chime sounded from above the door and the All-Mother could sense the elevator moving towards them. If it worked exactly like the ones the Empire had, she did not know, but at least it seemed to not require some form of magic from her.
Now I have to hope it can carry my weight. Aperio didn't know, exactly, how heavy she was, but it was certainly much more than people seemed to expect her to weigh.
A careful step and a slight shift of her weight elicited a low groan from the metal cables suspending the cabin. The small sign that adorned one of the walls did say something about the maximum carrying capacity of the elevator, which she clearly exceeded, but Aperio had no idea what two-thousand-five-hundred 'lbs' were. The acronym was a mystery to her as it had not been included in the dictionary she had memorised.
"Is the elevator broken?" Ethan asked as he stepped up next to the All-Mother and looked inside.
Aperio let some of her magic flow into the cables that held the metal cabin and fully entered it, ignoring the metal groan her magic had quickly silenced. "It is fine."
The rest of the group shuffled inside in short order, Caethya giving Aperio a raised brow as she had undoubtedly noticed the magic that had been used.
"How do you know which floor we have to go to?" Eleanor asked as Aperio pressed the button for the topmost floor.
"The same way I know that we were expected," she replied, but not elaborating further.
Eleanor tried a few more times, but the All-Mother simply ignored her, instead focusing on the "discussion" that was taking place between the people she they were on their way to visit. More like bickering.
Aperio had a little something planned for the mortals. An act of sorts that filled her with a giddy anticipation that had no right to feel as good as it did.
///
“You burned an entire village down! How can that not be excessive?!”
“You damn well know that that wasn’t my fault! If your stupid runts hadn’t placed barrels of liquor in the church, it wouldn’t have happened!”
“You asked us to do that!”
Elder Wu let out a sigh and did his best to not bury his face in his hands. Like always, the discussion had turned into a shouting match between the various factions before anything of note could be decided. The fact that reception had just informed him that their "guest" was on her way did not help his mood.
"Stop your senseless squabbling!" He slammed his fist on the table, causing a small crack to form in the ancient oak. "We have achieved nothing — again — and we will not have time to remedy that before our guest arrives.
"These meetings should serve to unify us and help everyone present to live in this world," he continued, eyes moving from one member of the council to the next. "But it would seem that we are incapable of doing that. Perhaps that is why this newcomer is visiting us."
"Perhaps she has come to throw this runt out of the council," Antalia said as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Or maybe she has seen that we are the better clan of mages."
Horatio, the mage Antalia probably hated the most, was about to reply when a knock — though calling it that might be wrong as the door almost sprang from its hinges — echoed through the room.
A moment later, the door opened and a large, pointy-eared — and seemingly winged — woman stepped into the room. Her presence was accompanied by a wave of frankly ancient-feeling mana that caused Elder Wu to seize up for a brief moment.
"I see that mortals are still fond of useless bickering," she said, her voice coming both from her lips and, somehow, inside his head as if it was a thought of his own. "I had honestly expected more."
Elder Wu grit his teeth as his eyes shifted from the tall, muscle-bound Elf to a more normal-looking one. This one appeared more like those he remembered from a dozen or so centuries ago. She was tall and lithe, but looked a bit more refined than the more primal versions from his memories.. Also has longer ears.
The other two people accompanying their guests were ones he knew. Eleanor, an aspiring young mage of some talent and a knack for getting into trouble and…
"Ethanial," Elder Wu said, his voice more strained than he would have liked. "Why are you here?"
"Does it matter why he is here?" the winged Elf asked as she moved around the table, her steps fluid and light as if she was floating. "Or would you like to partake in the 'senseless squabbles' you so readily accused the others of?" The woman loomed over him, casting a shadow that was far darker than it had any right to be. "I have found that I dislike upstarts who think the world is their playground. You seem to be one of those."
Her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer and Wu could have sworn that the silver flecks dotted around her otherwise blue iris moved every time he blinked. She drew back, focusing on the section of the table that housed the mages instead.
"I suppose some thanks to whoever of you owns that nifty little café down the street are in order," she said, one of her wings extending slightly to point eastwards. "The one with a ritual site below it. It has helped me tremendously."
"Helped with what?" Antalia asked. Her voice was hoarse and her knuckles white as she seemingly held onto her chair for dear life.
"Fixing a mistake," the Elf replied, and the mana that flowed from both her body and her voice subsided slightly. "I had been, perhaps, negligent — and definitely unaware of the issue before I had seen it." She shrugged, her wings moving in tandem with her shoulders to exaggerate the motion. "It matters not now, the mistake has been remedied."
The other Elf said something, in a language Elder Wu did not understand but could have sworn he had heard before, that caused the winged one to pause and sigh.
"Perhaps introductions are in order," she said, somehow standing even taller than before. She rested her hand on her chest and inclined her head slightly. "I am Aperio, though you likely do not know of me by that name." She extended a wing, wrapping it around the shoulders of the other Elf. "This is Caethya."
"No titles?" Eleanor asked, seemingly unaffected by the ever-changing amounts of mana Aperio put into the room. "I had expected some aft—"
"We will get to that," the winged Elf said, cutting the mage off. Her eyes settled back on Elder Wu, and from the sparkling cold running through his veins she was undoubtedly looking past his physical form and staring into his very Soul. "I am sure some of the mortals here already have an idea. They certainly seem like they can feel it."
Her words were accompanied by a pulse of mana that, for the briefest of moments, twisted reality to reveal silver threads that formed connections between an impossibly complex set of runes that gave him a headache at a mere glance.
Elder Wu blinked as his vision filled with a memory of the very same threads. He had been half-dead at the time, abandoned by his tribe left to die in the wilderness. Fate was not so kind as to give him a swift death then, as not even the wild animals deemed him to be a viable food. Weakened and unable to move, he could only watch as the creatures of the forest either ignored him completely or trampled over him as they treated him like part of the ground.
It was a miracle that had saved him. One that had manifested as countless threads of silver, stringing themselves across his body and filling him with so much pain he could not keep conscious. When he had come to, a voice in his head had spoken with words he could not understand, and a small window bearing the pictographs with which his tribe recorded their history hung in the air in front of him. He had been reborn, it read, in the night's blood, a phrase he had not understood at the time.
"Are you the Voice?" he asked shakily, the vivid memory quickly slipping back to the ancient past that he could rarely recall.
"No," the woman replied, smiling slightly. "I did, however, make it. The one who likely spoke to you is outside with our friend, though I cannot guarantee that it even remembers."
